Recently, consumption of silver halide light-sensitive photographic materials has kept on increasing. As a result, number of the silver halide light-sensitive photographic materials to be processes have increased and, therefore, adaptability of the silver halide light-sensitive materials to rapid processing, or increase in the amount of processing within a fixed period of time has been a strong demand.
Such a tendency is applicable to every other field of silver halide photography. For example in the field of medical radiography, the number of diagnoses and items of inspection, the number of photographs to be taken have increased, and due to necessity for patients to be advised by a doctor as soon as possible, further shortening of the processing time is strongly demanded. Particularly, in the fields of arteriography or photography during surgerical operations, it becomes necessary for the pictures to be seen by a doctor as quickly as possible and in order to satisfy this requirement, further development of automated diagnostic system, (including shooting and transportation, etc.) and rapid processing system of x-ray films are demanded.
However, it is well known that the rapid processing, which is usually carried out under high pH and high temperature(30.degree. to 40.degree. C.) conditions, often accompanies deterioration of image qualities. Particularly, in the case of rapid processing under high temperature by the use of a processor, so-called "roller mark" take place due to pressure of transporting rollers, which often lead to such image quality deterioration. Occurrence of the roller mark itself may be restrained by enhancing hardness of photographic layers and lowering swelling thereof. However, this invites deterioration in adaptability of photographic materials to processing; particularly in the rapid process, sensitivity and image contrast are often lowered and, thus, satisfactory performance may not be obtained.
In reply to such a demand for adaptability to rapid processing, tabular-shaped silver halide grains came to be employed. Since the tabular-shaped silver halide grain has relatively large specific surface area, it can adsorb a large quantity of sensitizing dye and, therefore, it is capable of enhancing spectral sensitivity, as well as reducing the cross-over effect and light scattering in the light-sensitive materials for x-ray exposure and, thus, it has characteristics of giving an image of high resolving power.
Accordingly, by using this tabular-shaped grains, there is expectation that a silver halide light-sensitive photographic material with enhanced sensitivity and improved image quality may be developed, however, this tabular-shaped grain has a defect that it is likely to cause fog due to pressure. Thus, for example, folding the light-sensitive material during handling thereof easily causes blackening, and friction with other material such as a transporting roller in the processor often brings about stringy fog, which can be a hindrance to accurate diagnosis. Although this kind of fogging may be improved by enhancing the layer hardness, however, as mentioned above, this leads to deterioration of processing performance and, therefore, may not be an effective means. Recently. in particular, due to strict environmental controls, a processing system which discharges reduced liquid wastes by reducing replenishing amount of processing solutions. However, in the processing with reduced replenishment, accumulation tends to be condensed easily, which results in enlarging variation or deterioration by the process. When silver chloride is used as the silver halide grain, effect of accumulation of halide ions can be improved because the effect of the halide ions on the developing solution is considerably small with respect to Cl.sup.- in comparison with Br.sup.- or I.sup.-. However, it is difficult to give sufficient sensitivity and, thus, satisfactory performance is not obtainable.